Findings — Sixteen Inventions, Lera Auerbach’s String Quartet No. 4, is built as a sequence of sixteen concise movements. The title suggests discovery: each invention appears as a musical object found, examined, transformed, and released.

The quartet moves through sharply varied states: marcato motion, religious mystery, scherzando agitation, recitative, dreamlike slowness, prestissimo brilliance, and a final ad libitum stillness. The compact invention-like structure gives the work both architectural clarity and psychological volatility.

Sixteen inventions: fragments of motion, prayer, dream, agitation, and discovery.

Commissioned by The Caramoor International Music Festival and premiered at Caramoor by the Parker String Quartet, the work continues Auerbach’s exploration of the quartet as a concentrated theatre of gesture, memory, and inner drama.

Sixteen Inventions. A compact sequence of sixteen contrasting musical findings.

Caramoor. Commissioned by The Caramoor International Music Festival.

Parker Quartet. First performed by the Parker String Quartet.

String Quartet No. 4 “Findings — Sixteen Inventions” follows Cetera desunt and turns the quartet form toward a set of compact discoveries. Where the third quartet is framed as a sonnet of absences, the fourth becomes a collection of inventions: brief, vivid, and sharply etched.

The work belongs to the chamber-music catalogue published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski and appears as SIK 8590. As chamber music, it is presented here with the official Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski work page rather than rental-material links.